Hanging Out in Hated Places with Rick Rule

In today’s episode, we’re joined by renowned resource investor Rick Rule to explore where the most overlooked pockets of value lie in the market.

Our conversation covers the most beaten-up parts of the market, whether there’s merit in playing the ‘picks n shovels’ approach to resources, how the financing side of the industry continues to evolve, his views on the latest government intervention in the sector, and plenty more.

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TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Introduction: Neglected Sectors 
(01:29) Oil and Gas 
(04:34) Government Influence on Commodities (09:29) Rare Earths and Global Supply Chains 
(15:54) Uranium Market Dynamics 
(26:28) Natural Resource Financing 
(28:21) Streaming and Royalties 
(35:08) Gold and Copper Miners 
(36:12) Barrick's Future 
(41:36) Mining Services Businesses 
(49:01) Lithium Market Insights 
(51:53) Vanadium and Nickel 
(56:49) Silver and Tin 
(01:03:11) Contrarian Views and the US Dollar 

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The government sees their job isto steal.
What they exist for is to take money from one constituency and
deliver to constituencies that vote for them.
So the idea that the government will penalize the oil and gas
business is true, but when the margin is there, they'll
penalize the coal business, the gold, the gold business or any
other business. All righty, Rick Rule, it's been

(00:23):
a a year, a very eventful year in in markets.
So we're excited to, to have youback on to, to pick your brain
about what's what's hated, what's unloved, what people
aren't talking about enough and where the these sort of
opportunities are in, in the resource world.
So let's start the conversation right there.
What, what is the sort of part of the markets that you find
most neglected at the moment? I would say conventional oil and

(00:47):
gas, it's a very, very good business.
It's a big, it's a business that, you know, the big
thinkers, Greta Thornburg and people like that have suggested
aren't going to exist in 2032 orwhatever it is.
You know, when securities analysts do net present values

(01:11):
on oil and gas companies, they tend to ignore the tale.
They tend to believe that they aren't going to enjoy any cash
flow after 2030, two, 2033. I'm pretty convinced that for
the balance of your life, never mind mine, that oil and gas is
going to be a pretty robust business.
So if I had to, if I had to put my finger on the biggest

(01:32):
opportunity on a global basis, it's certainly oil and gas.
I would suggest that even the biggest of the big, big and the
best of the best like Exxon Mobil are probably selling at a
50% discount to their net present value.
If you understand that those netpresent values are very long

(01:54):
cash flow curves and the tail, the net present value tail is
extremely fat. So that would probably be the
one that attracts me the most. It's also a very good business.
You know, in the mining business, you know, we all pray
for return of capital employed and the oil and gas guys talk

(02:15):
about return on capital employed.
It's a very, very different point of view.
It's a Better Business. Not meaning to insult miners, of
course, but you understand the point there.
I always. Find that fascinating, Rick,
because Exxon, you know, is the descendant of like Standard Oil,
the company that started well over 150 years ago and it goes

(02:36):
through ebbs and flows of consolidation and and
separation. And recently we have seen a
number of big deals and consolidation.
So when when you think about making that bet, do you think
about like you say, going for the Exxons of the world or going
going down the curve and and buyouts to come?
You know, when I was a broker, Iused to encourage clients who

(02:59):
didn't have resource portfolios to buy market beta to start
their portfolios with the best of the best.
And then after they had accomplished that, after they
had accomplished starting a, a portfolio in an unloved sector,
then I would take them down the quality trail, take more risk in

(03:22):
hopes of greater reward. But what you learn in resource
businesses is that when the sector returns to favor just the
beta, defining the beta as the extent to which that sector
outperforms the broad market is often incredible.
And too often people have the strategy right, but they screw

(03:43):
up the tactics. You know, they buy some package
of nothing nowhere juniors thinking that because the gold
price ran, those juniors are going to run forgetting those
juniors don't have any damn gold, you know.
And so when I constructed oil and gas portfolios for people, I
would begin by buying the best of the best by owning the beta

(04:06):
and not exposing the customer toany operational risk whatsoever.
And then to the extent that the client exhibited some taste for
volatility, some patients and some willingness to learn, then
we would take the client down the quality trail looking for

(04:27):
more alpha. And that's still the same today.
If I was constructing an oil an oil portfolio today, I would
start with Exxon. And, and how do you think about
the, the sort of evolving role in, in governments here?
Because I, I totally hear, hear the bet, but I, I can't help but
think about what we saw in the coal industry here in, in QLD
recently. And you know, for, for those

(04:49):
unfamiliar, just a massive jacking up of the royalty rates
after, after the fact, after theinvestments have been made.
So does that perhaps tweak how you think about this bet
jurisdictionally? Yeah, but that's the same for
all commodities. At the risk of sounding too
American, and certainly this is a reflection on American

(05:09):
politics, The government sees their job is to steal.
What they exist for is to take money from one constituency and
deliver it to constituencies that vote for them.
And so the idea that the government will penalize the oil
and gas business is true, but when the margin is there,
they'll penalize the coal business, the gold, the gold

(05:31):
business, or, or any other business.
Their job, they would say their job is to equalize or transfer
wealth. I would suggest to you their job
is to steal. You'll notice that governments
aren't particularly a hindrance in a sector where the selling
price of the product is below the cost of production.

(05:52):
They're smart enough to know that you can't steal nothing.
But when an industry starts to deliver the free cash flow that
the Australian coal industry does.
There was a famous American bankrobber, I forget the guy's name,
Willie Sutton I think it was. And a guy said, well, so Mr.
Sutton, why do you rob banks? He said, well, because that's

(06:13):
where the money is. And I think that's the way the
governments think. They don't pay any attention to
a A sector until there's some low hanging fat fruit that they
can distribute to their constituents and then of course
they go to steal it. We prepare these periods of
super, super profits in commodities where, you know,

(06:33):
commodity prices randomly flex up but one year in every 10.
And unfortunately now that comeswith the risk that you'll never
have a super profit again. And, you know, it's easy to
steal from the coal business because they're hated.
Oh, yeah, you know, they do bad things.
They put smoke in the air and all that kind of stuff.

(06:54):
And listen, I'm, you know, I'm all for reducing the amount of
deleterious material piped into the air and pumped into the
water and stuff. But here's a couple things that
maybe the Australian politiciansshould reflect on.
One, around the world, when people talk about carbon

(07:15):
emerging in frontier markets, suggest the carbon quotas
shouldn't be established nationally, but rather per
capita. We don't like that in the West
because we don't have too many capitas.
The other thing they should suggest is that historical
carbon loadings matter, and theybelieve that the big economies

(07:35):
that contributed all the carbon pollution prior to 10 years ago
should be penalized for that. Which is to say, Australian
voters need to understand that if you're going to equalize the
cost of carbon around the world on a per capita basis,

(07:55):
Australians are going to really be punished for their past
successes. The other side of the coal trade
that makes me laugh is that people say it's a declining
business. They say it's going the way the
dodo. The problem with that is that
the biggest year on history for coal demand was 2024.
It's set to be eclipsed in 2025.S Those people are ignoring

(08:16):
math. The government wasn't, of
course, they decided to steal where the money was.
But the other thing is people say, well, the few you know, the
future is what you have to look at the future.
The future is alternative energy.
I think I noted once talking to you guys a year or two years
ago, and these are slightly old statistics, but humankind has

(08:37):
spent about $5 trillion now on alternative energies and we've
reduced the energy market share of fossil fuels from a high of
83 percent 40 years ago to a lowof 81% today.
A $5 trillion investment is reduced the market share of
fossil fuels by 2% in 40 years. That's an inconvenient truth for

(09:01):
certain people. Not, by the way, for the
politicians who've decided to steal money from the Queensland
Coal shareholders. I'm afraid that cash cow will
enrich them for years to come. But others need to consider
that. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the, the, the, the flip side of that one as well is that

(09:21):
total energy demand around the world keeps, keeps growing.
So while, whilst just 2% the, the, the pie gets bigger and
bigger there. While we're on the, the topic of
government and specifically the,the US government, as we touched
on earlier, I can't help but askabout the, the recent actions in
the, the rare earths world. I think this is pretty
monumental news that we've seen come out, come out of the States

(09:44):
and it's going to be replicated here in Australia and I suspect
in in other parts of the world as well.
How, how did you kind of digest that all to to start with Rick?
Rick's talking about rare earthsnow.
There's a rare earth deposit in Malawi that is going to
literally going to come into construction now as a result of
the entire dynamic being underwritten by Lucre and the

(10:07):
Australian government recently. That deposit, Kakangunde, I
think it is Malawi delegates from there and Lindian, the
operator of that project, all going to be at Africa Down
Under, mate. You're going to want to get up
to speed on Africa Down Under, which is kicking off next week,
September 3rd to September 5th, in fact.
We're going to be there this time next week.
We are. We're going to be there.
Come join us. Take us through in the show
notes here. Dom tell you all about it right

(10:29):
now. You know, we hear a lot of
misconceptions and, and opinionsabout Africa a lot of the time
from people who don't actually ever travel to Africa.
So it's the, you know, it, it literally is straight from the
source in this regard. So Malawi, for instance, we can
hear from the minister there about how they're trying to

(10:50):
establish a mining industry. We have the deputy minister from
South Africa, you know, such a complicated, convoluted history
of mining, but they are really trying to redraw the script
there. So it'll be interesting to hear
from her. The the Ghanaian minister, Ghana
has been in the news a lot recently with a few battles over

(11:10):
goldfields and a few other things.
We'll be able to hear from him first hand what, you know, what
their, what their approach is tonew foreign investment.
And then other exciting ones that we haven't heard a lot
about. Egypt, you know, Anglo Gold have
just paid $2 billion for the Sicari mine.
It's the only mine in Egypt, huge 450,000 oz producer, but

(11:32):
they've never really seen a lot of foreign investment other than
that, not even exploration. So the Egyptian minister's
coming, which you know, he's coming WA to try and cut new
investors and find explorers andestablish companies to come and
invest in their country. So, you know, you can get a real
inside running, whether you're looking to pick up projects
there yourself or you know, buy equities in in these these

(11:55):
emerging companies who are prepared to to take that high
risk approach. Then you're going to get the
inside track on on which countries are serious about
attracting investment and which are perhaps not so serious.
Got to get your tickets. Well, as a citizen, as a
taxpayer, I think it's disgusting.

(12:18):
As a speculator, I guess it's myjob if they're going to steal
from me, to steal some back. I know not so much in the rare
earths because the United States, other than Mountain
Pass, which isn't really a mine in the uranium business in the
United States. I went from being absolutely
reviled five years ago, from being somebody who speculated in

(12:39):
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Three Mile Island to now these morons
want to subsidize me. And I have to say I felt cleaner
when I was reviled. I think what you say is true.
I think industrial policy in theWest has become afraid enough,
particularly the Chinese and thethreat by the Chinese to

(12:59):
weaponize access to rare earths that they will spend an awful
lot of money to establish a China secure supply chain.
And I, I think what you see in rare earths you're going to see
in a lot of different places. I think it's unfortunate.
Personally, I want no governmentNexus in any part of my life,

(13:25):
but in particular in my wallet. But given that it's going to
occur, I'm sort of duty bound totake the money.
And and how do you think more broadly about that, that anti
China or kind of independence supply lines?
Because like you say, it's not, it's not just railroads.

(13:46):
It's going to happen in every single.
I mean, we're speaking about it in in copper as well with with
projects and and tariffs as as these sorts of things.
So are there are there other sort of thoughts that come to
mind apart from the the sheer concern of the the government
plundering money there? As you can gather from my
earlier response, I'm not much of A politician.

(14:08):
I don't know much about politics, but I've done a lot of
business in China and I would prefer a circumstance where we
were cooperative with them. My experience in China has been
largely good. I'm not trying to say it's been
all good, but there's no place on the planet where my

(14:29):
experience has been largely good.
My preference would be, althoughwe know we're going to compete
with each other, that we understand that we need to
cooperate too and find avenues of cooperation.
That's probably not very popularwith jingoistic voters who
would, you know, prefer to have someone of a different hue that

(14:49):
they could hate. By the way, on both sides of the
Pacific, the Chinese themselves are not short of jingoistic
morons, despite my preference what the Chinese are doing
today, which is to say utilizingtheir economic surplus.

(15:11):
Unanimity of purpose, foreign policy to secure their supply
chains is exactly what the US did in the 1950s and 1960s.
It's exactly what Europe did in the 1970s, what Japan did in the
1980s. We in the United States resent
the fact that we have a competitor.

(15:34):
We have a competitor that seems to be more predisposed to
education, more predisposed to savings, less predisposed to
whatever it is that America's predisposed to.
So it makes perfect sense to me that we're getting out competed.
On on that point, Rick, to to talk back to the rare earths in

(15:59):
particular. I think 12 months ago you said
that that the easy money in uranium had already been made.
Has the easy money in rare earths already been made?
I don't think so for the simple reason that in the uranium side
we had a fair number of reasonably good deposits that
were delineated as far back as pre Fukushima.

(16:22):
And you could see a deposit. Well, Boss is a great example.
You could see a deposit that hadbeen delineated that you
understood, you understood the path to prosperity.
But before they had a chance to have a problem, the stock was up
by 5 or 600% uranium. The easy money for me, and by

(16:44):
the way, I I think the big moneyis likely ahead of us, but we
can talk about that later. The easy money is when the
sector passed from being hated to being tolerated.
As recently as a year ago, you'dgo online and these people who
have been ridiculous bulls on uranium four or five years ago,
people who had uranium as part of their Internet handle, we're

(17:08):
bemoaning the day that they everlearned to spell uranium.
And we're being beginning to tout, you know, some crypto or
something like that. The hate that uranium
encountered as a consequence of the stupidity of the speculators
who was who were commentating was unbelievable.
And it occurred to me that all uranium had to do is become

(17:29):
unhated. And that's what happened.
And and your point on the, the, the big money there, how do you
say that playing out? Oh, listen, that's really
exciting. Well, no, it isn't exciting.
That's well, it's, it's excitingto people who think and invest,
you know, not to the rhetoric type.

(17:51):
The structure of the uranium market is changing and it's
changing a lot. Right now, uranium is the only
commodity in the world where producers and consumers can sign
contracts of five years duration, 10 years duration, 15
years duration that specify price and volume.

(18:13):
What that means is that if you're a uranium developer, you
can know with some certainty howmuch uranium you're going to
sell and who you're going to sell it to and for how much.
And to the extent that you are uranium junior who had no hope

(18:34):
of financing your deposit and production, you had to sell it,
and you had to sell it to a fairly narrow range of buyers.
Now you can do 2 things. You can sign a fixed price
contract to build the mine with Westinghouse Kamiko and you can
sell contracts so that you can specify the price and volume 15

(18:56):
years out with investment grade counterparties.
Tokyo Electric Power, China General, Nuclear, Southern
Companies. There is no other resource
sector on the planet that has certainty as to price and terms
over time with credit grade counterparties.
Mercifully for this, you know, quiet old lender Rick Rule or

(19:19):
quite old speculator Rick Rule, not one investor in 1000 has
cared about the implications of price and volume certainty over
time. It it's interesting the slavish
focus on the spot market. Most days the Sprott Physical
Uranium Trust does more dollar volume than the spot uranium

(19:43):
market is. The Sprott market has become the
spot market. The tail is truly wagging the
dog and the volumes are ridiculously low, but people pay
attention to it because it's an easy to grasp or or easy to
obtain. Data point useless except, you

(20:07):
know, to sell newsletters or getspeculative pulses going.
It really isn't an indication ofthe market which is.
Volatility will tell you when it's volume will tell you if
nothing else does. But speculators pay slavish
attention to it. A factoid, sort of.
So, so you're good. What what you're talking about

(20:27):
with the the price and volume certainty is, is effectively
like an infrastructure in infrastructure, a keen funding
dynamic that can can transform the capital flow into the
sector. Yeah, exactly.
As a lender, uranium is the onlysubject on the the only
commodity on the planet where ifthe contracts are set up, the

(20:48):
lender knows the volume of material that can be sold and
the price it will be sold for. In every commodity based
construction loan I've ever madein my life, and I've made
billions, I've done it with my fingers crossed because I had no
earthly idea 2 years from now what the selling price of the
commodity would be or who who myminer or oil company would sell

(21:14):
it to. There is a startling degree of
certainty around price and volume in the uranium business
that if the terms are disclosed to the lenders, should give the
lender a lot of comfort relativeto other businesses and should
ultimately reduce the cost of capital to particularly below

(21:38):
investment grade uranium developers.
I would suspect that the certainty to over the next five
years will be comfortable to securities analysts.
You know, if you're a lazy old Securities analyst, say Rick
Rule, and you're trying to do a net present value calculation on
a uranium developer, but you don't know how much they can

(21:58):
sell her for what price. You know that discounted debt
present value analysis becomes voodoo.
It turns out over the last 50 years most of what I've done has
been voodoo, and the idea that it becomes less voodoo is very

(22:18):
attractive to me. You know who's a very big Rick
Roll fan? He told me.
Tell me Joel. Joel.
So we've been talking about Jason O'Rourke, who CEO at Axis
Mineral Services, Ken Crush Rocks.
But Joel, Joel CEO there, mate, you'll hate the fact I'm talking
about him. Shout out Joel.

(22:39):
I know he's a big Rick Roll fan.He'll be listening to this one.
So we've got we've we've got to talk about we've got to talk.
We've got to put Joel next to Rick Rule.
We do and talk about the people that mineral services.
What do they do mate? Mate, they crush big rocks into
small rocks. That's the one thing you've just
got to get into your mind out there.
If you need to crush big rocks into small ones, Taxis Mineral
Services are the company. They have the track record as

(23:00):
well. Trev, I know you know this.
They've worked with all the top caliber mining operations in the
goldfields and they're expanding.
They they do crush big rocks into little rocks.
They've got an ability to sort out small rocks from each other
or. Sorting.
They they, they can now actuallygive you an entire front end of
your circuit. The plant on a Boo model.

(23:20):
Mate, if there's a problem like your, your rocks are too hard,
well, guess what? They can bring in dynamic,
dynamic, innovative solutions like nothing is too foreign for
these guys. I'm even talking about like
HPGR, like that's a possibility.All thanks to the fact that Axis
Mineral Services, they've now got this enhanced capability.
They're part of the Robex construction group.
And what does that mean? Things are possible that never

(23:42):
been done before They've. Got engineering, fire firepower,
financial firepower and they have a team that just gets it
done. Can't understate this one enough
mate. All you have to do is bring your
problem to them and they will serve the solution to you on a
platter. Mate and you see the team buy in
they've got so they put they putup a little snippet of of money
in mine and there were like 8 people that all shared that.
Now that is that is buy in that's a team with camaraderie

(24:05):
that that has real buy into thisbusiness.
That's a. Team you'd want to hire for a
job. You know what?
So get in touch with Axes Mineral Services.
Go axes there's a there's a couple added details that that
make it all quite quite interesting.
So firstly, a lot of these restart projects that we we
speak about you mentioned boss paladin, another one that comes
to mind have seen sort of numerous stumbles in in getting

(24:28):
to that nameplate number. And then there seems to be a
real apprehension in the market from the investor perspective to
to sign up to that price guarantee because that that's
you know, apparently locking away the the magical upside.
We see it more in the in the gold market where there's this
massive trend to be an unhedged gold miner now.

(24:52):
Investors want the volatility mate, don't take that away from
them. There for the commodity.
So how do you take on board those those two sort of notes?
You know what? I'm an old man.
You can have some of my upside if you take away my downside.
I'm really good with that. Print Oh no, These uranium
companies will still give you downside, I promise you that.

(25:13):
I mean, you know, we we pick on uranium companies not not
attaining nameplate capacity. I've been around the gold
business for 50 years and to be honest with you, it's much more
frequent than not. You know, when guys announce
economic completion, you'll notice that often isn't two or
three quarters until the operation shakes in and they

(25:37):
reach nameplate capacity. It seems that economic
completion, nameplate capacity are very different things.
My my favorite is here when theythey announced commercial
production, but but it never made money and then it and then
it goes broke. Yeah.
What was commercial like you youhad a day where it made money?
I don't know. So, you know, I take what you
say about the, the uranium industry, there's a relatively

(26:00):
small number of data points, butI suspect that what you talk
about is ubiquitous. So, you know, not, I mean,
frankly not just in mining. If, if the three of us started a
carpet mill, you know, we had some big building and in the
front comes wool and cotton and oil or whatever goes into a
carpet. What comes out the back to begin
with isn't carpet. You know, it takes a way to

(26:22):
shake, it takes a while to shakethese big plants in,
irrespective of what they're making, sadly.
It it brings me to another kind of question as well, thinking
about getting these mines online.
Rick, you, you know, you're in the, the, the line making world
as well. How do you think about the, the
dearth of natural resource institutions funds specifically

(26:45):
set up to invest? You know, we see it here in
Australia, there's less and lessof them.
How do you think about that and and what that does to future
demand and supply? Well, as a check writer, I think
it's a wonderful thing. The idea that I have fewer
competitors, especially young smart ones, seems to me to be a
very good thing for the industry.

(27:05):
Of course, it's not a good thing.
In truth, I think the biggest challenge the industry faces,
other than rapacious governments, is the dearth of
young people coming into the sector.
I look at the mining industry and it isn't just because of my
age, but the people I see. It's very much like I'm looking

(27:28):
in the mirror, you know, old, fat, bald, white guys.
We've been there for 50 years. We have experienced, but we
don't have legs anymore and we meaning the mining industry,
we're not, we're not going to beable to fill the skills gap.

(27:48):
We're not going to be able to fill it at the rock face.
We're not going to be able to fill it in the mill.
We're not going to be able to fill it in the boardroom.
And that's going to be a challenge for us.
It will take care of itself overtime.
You know, markets always work. And if you have a shortage of
people, what you have to do for a while, like we had to do in
the early part of the 1970s whenmercifully I came into the

(28:08):
market, is you have to pay thosepeople too much, which is a good
circumstance. That's how we that's how we
cured this, the shortage in the early part of the decade and
70s, and it's how we'll do it again.
But it's going to be a challenge.
One of the other market based iterations we've seen on that
financing front is the move towards streaming as well as

(28:29):
royalties becoming ever kind of bigger.
What do you make of this kind ofpresence, and do you think
there's a natural band that we get close to hitting up on
there? No, I think it's strangely
rational. I think that the speculators in
particular know the investors too are willing to pay more for

(28:51):
precious metals cash flow isolated and royal to your
stream. What that means is that what I'm
competing with Randy Smallwood over at Wheaton and I'm a
lender. He knows that that cash flow to
him is going to be valued at 16 or 17 times cash flow.

(29:13):
If I'm looking for a 15% internal rate of return as a
lender, he's going to beat me all day long as he should.
He's a lower cost provider of capital because the capital
markets are give it will give itto him.
Particularly cash flow that comes from a, you know, lead
zinc operation, silver cash flowthat comes from a lead zinc
operation or gold cash flow thatcomes from a copper operation.

(29:35):
The equities markets will give that cash flow in a copper
wrapper 6 times cash flow, whereas they'll give it 15 or 16
times cash flow in a streaming wrapper.
And a lot of people have said tome that they think that the big
streaming deals are over, that the big royalty deals are over.

(29:58):
I heard that at my conference inBoca Raton and that's Holcomb.
The copper business in particular probably in 10 years
faces between 100 and $150 billion in front end capital
expense. And to the extent that they can

(30:19):
sell the gold, silver byproduct cash flow from that copper
production at some number like 14 or 15 times cash flow and use
that to obviate more equity. When they're selling at fairly
low multiples of cash flow themselves or premium priced

(30:39):
debt, there'd be well advised todo that.
The second thing that's happening is that a lot of host
governments and frontier marketswould like to own larger pieces
of their resource industry, politically palatable, all that
kind of stuff. But they don't have any money
and they're constrained by arbitration agreements from

(30:59):
stealing it, so they have to buyit.
Buying something when you don't have any money is a bit of a
challenge. And what I suspect is going to
happen is that those companies will jawbone with the companies,
those those countries, pardon me, will jawbone with the
companies and they will finance the company's take by selling a

(31:23):
stream. I believe that we haven't seen
the biggest streaming or the biggest royalty deals that we're
going to see. I believe that the next 10 years
we'll see literally multibilliondollar streaming deals and
perhaps royalty deals. Increasingly host governments

(31:44):
are receiving royalty, some of them extraordinarily generous on
gold production, but somehow managing to squander all the
money. Old money, all gone, send new
money. And I suspect that one of the
ways that they will get new money is that they'll sell those
royalties to the royalty companies.

(32:05):
So I believe that the next 10 years for the royalty and
streaming business will be even better than the last 20 have
been, which have been pretty good.
So take take take for example, Panama, I think, I think Panama
has a has a phenomenal royalty over Cobra Panama and you

(32:25):
suspect that like it's not beyond the realm of possibility
that the country I don't know will sell their royalty over
that asset to the likes of Franco.
Yeah, part of the royalty, one way that they might reach a
fiscal agreement with Panama, who wants more money, is to give
Panama some upside of the gold price or the copper price.

(32:46):
That's called a stream, and Panama then can turn that into
cash. Understand that the president of
Panama, despite whatever pretenses he might have, doesn't
care very much what happens to the government till after he's
out of office. He wants to spend money now.
So the construction of a 20 yearstream and then the monetization

(33:09):
of the stream in this guy's termis extremely attractive to him.
And as a consequence, I think we'll resolve a lot of problems.
Watching that one closely and, and I suppose like in the first
first quantum they've, they've utilized streaming in a, in a,
in a more forthcoming way than the most minors out there.

(33:30):
Or most recently in relation to the, the Zambian copper assets
where they they were pretty advanced, I believe to to sell
down a minority stake to either Menara or Japanese trading
house. Neither of those eventuated, but
they've they've opted for streaming instead.
I can tell you with certainty that every big mining company in

(33:52):
the world, particularly in the copper business, is looking at
streaming transactions to finance construction.
There are no exceptions. That they might have an added
competitor with the, with the trend of gold companies coming
in and and looking at at copper assets as well.

(34:13):
Do you do you think that gets larger and larger with these,
these big gold names looking at copper assets individually or
copper companies for takeovers? I think that'll depend on how
Barrick manages Reik. Barrick has done better in the
market of late simply because their gold margins have been

(34:36):
increasing. But the market doesn't like, I
don't think Barrick migrating tothe copper business.
I've always been sort of Catholic myself as to where my
cash flow comes from. My apologies to Catholics.
You know, to me, cash is cash and I'd take it from sand and
gravel. But I suspect that gold

(34:58):
companies that are perceived as being too copper dependent will
suffer a lower cash flow multiple.
But time will tell if Barrick, if Barrick makes a huge success
of Rayco Deek, if the market accepts that cash flow, should
it occur at a reasonable multiple, I think that's

(35:20):
probably a good Ave. of growth for the gold mining companies.
They need to be careful because traditionally the copper miners
have been much more efficient miners.
I think it would be probably easier for a copper miner to
come and operate successfully inthe gold space than vice versa.
The copper miners have had a lower, a, pardon me, a higher
cost of capital than the gold miners have for a long time.

(35:44):
They've had even more price volatility than the gold miners
have had for a very long time. They're pretty good miners in
comparison. Maybe not good miners as an
example compared to Agnico Eagle, but they're pretty good
miners and I think the gold companies might find that to be
a hugely competitive league should they choose to go down

(36:05):
that route. Should.
Should they choose to go down that route or should should the
cash flow at Rico Dico occur? How are you thinking about the
the potential that a that a barrack breakup could pan out
over the next next couple of years?
OK, you know. Nevada probably be a good thing,
but I mean, there was a time 40 years ago when Bristow listened

(36:29):
to me. That was a long time ago.
He hasn't needed a check from Rick for four decades, so.
He's finally signalled that his his departure is is coming in a
in a couple of years. They've started a search for a
replacement and the and the company, famously, you know,
doesn't have an obvious next Bristow.
Yep, Yep. I mean there's there's something

(36:53):
to be said for keeping the company together in the sense
that the size itself increasingly is a determinative
trading volume and share price and hence cost of capital.
On the other hand, if the capital markets can show Bristow
or or show Bristow's successor that the value of the sum of the
parts is substantially greater than the price of the whole,

(37:17):
then the board has to listen because it is a cost of capital
gain. Barracks certainly gets
penalized as an example for their W African assets despite
the success of those assets and they seem to attract a premium
price for the Northern Nevada assets despite the failure of
the Northern Nevada assets for several years to make that make

(37:39):
their AIAISC targets. So I mean perhaps, perhaps a
break up is in the cards. I don't know.
Evolutions Jake Klein down down here in Australia, Rick sort of
said a while ago that that 8 feels like a, a natural number
of assets for a, for a mining company to have or an upper

(38:01):
limit of, of assets for a miningcompany to have.
What what are you going to thinkof that?
And you know, with with in mind that that Barico holds a bit
more than that. I I think it's less important
than the quality of the mines. I like what Newmont did.
Finally, you know, Newmont grew for size sake and they grew and

(38:23):
they grew and they grew and theygrew, taking over agglomerations
of Tier 2 mines. I'm not saying they were small
shitty mines, but they weren't great mines.
And what Newmont did after they bought New Crest is they really
cleaned house. I don't know how many mines they
sold, 11 or 12, and they were probably mines that could

(38:44):
benefit from the care and attention that they would get
from a management team who was focused on that one mine.
What it allowed Newmont to do was focus their attention on the
minds that mattered. You know, the 5 million oz
deposits, the 10 million oz deposits, so deposits that we're
making four hundred 500,000 oz. So I think it's less important
the number of mines that somebody operates then the

(39:06):
quality of the mines they operate and in particular the
concentration. I'm an old guy now, you know,
I'm old and fat and lazy, but I would hate to be ACEO and a COO
or a COO and have to fly to visit mines on 4 continents.
I wouldn't like that. I interviewed Amar Al Jundi, who

(39:28):
is the CEO of Agnico Eagle, at my conference a month ago and
was talking to him about the reason for the absolute and
relative success of Agnico Eagle.
And he said, you know, really, we're a really good construction
company and a pretty good allocator of capital, but we try

(39:52):
to operate in areas where we have an infrastructure advantage
over our peers. It's it's not that hard to
figure out. There were other things he said.
You know, their their corporate culture where he believes they
treat their people better and it's a consequence of that.
His turnover is 1/3 of what other mining companies were.
But an important thing that he said is that they don't seek to

(40:14):
be all things to all people, that they are looking for
centers of critical mass. And if over time they don't
develop the critical mass, they sell the assets there, go back
to doing what they do. And I think that's an important
statement. I don't think that there's a
numerically correct number of operations that somebody can
operate. I think operating synergies

(40:36):
matter and I think, you know, size, scale and durable
competitive advantage matters. Yeah, that the rubber mill is
always full of what is AG Nico buying in Australia, for
example. And of course, I do talk about
the fact that WA has the geologythat is, you know, but I'm, I'll

(40:58):
constantly be skeptical that they're going to come here in
the next 5 years because they don't have an infrastructure
advantage here. They have to acquire an
infrastructure advantage here. And I think they've done enough
work to to realize that it's much more complex and higher
cost and the infrastructures, yeah, it's it's not quite the
advantage and they think it is here.
Right now they define, or at least Amar defined competitive

(41:20):
advantage to me as construction and operation in cold remote
sites. That doesn't seem to describe WA
to me. The last time I looked y'all had
a shortage of glaciers. I got a bluff now.
You'll find some snow sometimes.A real shortage on the, on the
thinking about, you know, construction and, and you know,

(41:44):
kind of gets me thinking about engineering and all these other
parts of the mining business. You know, I can't help but note,
Rick, a lot of your investments are tied up in like mining
adjacent type businesses as well.
So obviously in Sprott there's, there's a big sort of
shareholding. So these picks and shovels ways
of playing the market are, are pretty fascinating.

(42:06):
And we've seen like in the in the last month in particular,
the mining services business here in Australia have just
skyrocketed they've. Multiple expansion is the only
way you can explain it. Yeah, substantial multiple
expansion. Substantial multiple expansion
exactly. And yeah, I mean, I'm curious
just to to peek into this with you because it's a trend you
play in a in a slightly different way tacking on to a

(42:29):
potential bull market in in commodities via a picks and
shovel type approach. I understand 2 businesses.
Only one is natural resources, fairly broadly defined, mining,
oil and gas, agriculture and forestry.
I understand fisheries enough toavoid it.

(42:50):
I'm no good at it. And I understand conventional
financial services. And so the intersection of
financial public services, a wealth manager and asset manager
and insurance company, a bank that services the mining of the
oil and gas industry suits me perfectly.
I understand their underwriting criteria.

(43:11):
I understand how they think because that's what I've done
for 50 years. I've been a fairly unsuccessful
mining services investor. I've been a successful oil and
gas services investor only because it's such a good
business that it was tough to screw it up.
You know, you buy somebody with a durable technological

(43:32):
advantage like Schlumberger in abusiness that doesn't go away
and they do well. But to be honest with you, the
temptations that I've had and they've been many over 50 years
to to involve myself in physicalpicks and shovels as it relate
to mining, I'd be embarrassed toshow you the results.

(43:53):
The companies that you talk about like Sprott, which is to
say offering financial services to minors, that's been a very
different story. I've done well there when I
compete with those guys, when, you know, if I was going to look
at 1/4 for Macquarie, I'd know what I was looking at because
I've borrowed to them. I've been in syndicates, I've

(44:13):
competed with them, you know, I've bought them beer.
I've almost thrown beer at them.So I I have the ability to
understand what they do and thathas been, I think, responsible
for my comfort in financial services related to mining.
There's there's not a third typeof business you understand well,

(44:35):
well to Rick being media businesses.
No, I'm just learning that, you know, I started, I started rural
investment media with no idea how I was going to monetize it,
to be honest with you, sort of ready fire aim and mercifully my
customers told me how to monetize it.
I found, by the way, rich peopleare very generous with

(44:55):
information as to how you can service them better.
The success in rural investment media has been evolutionary, but
I have a lot to learn in that business.
Having fun learning it. I've got a great team.
Yeah. Well, I, I asked a question kind
of tongue in cheek, but but, butbut genuinely how important is
the, the, the media business to,to the deal access that you get

(45:19):
in, in the investment space? Not really.
It I think it's going to become increasingly important.
What happened to me is I forgot to die.
You know, I lived a long time and the people that I grew up
with, the people that I was a pup with, turned out to be, you
know, movers and shakers. And so I got included in deals

(45:42):
because I had checks and cashed and for old time's sake.
Unfortunately for me, you know the guys I grew up with are
either dead or like Pierre Lassand, increasingly long of
tooth. So keeping myself relevant with
100,000 subscribers is probably my next line of defense.

(46:07):
To, to touch back on the, the Sprott investment, because
that's, that's one you've held for for some time.
Do do you think it's understated, an understated way
of, of playing a natural resource boom?
You know the the ways in which they can make money off the back
of growth in, in commodities through the, the various
products. And there's similar type ways

(46:29):
you can play that here in, in Australia as well.
Is sort of notable in its size in in your portfolio, it kind of
seems. I think it's safer and it's
capital light, which is attractive.
It's also, of course, a business.
I understand the margins in thatbusiness are very, very high.

(46:55):
There's a plethora of low fee products, in particular the
physical trust in that in that business, 35 or 40 basis point
products, but they're 35 or 40 basis point products where
there's very little effort required to run them.
So your gross is your net. If you think about 40 basis

(47:18):
points on $35 billion, it ends up being a very large sum and
it's highly leveraged to hire AUM.
The higher AUM occurs to different ways organically as
the gold price goes up, more people are attracted to gold
oriented investments and the value of the gold owned by

(47:40):
Sprott itself goes up. So the management fee goes up at
the same time that the multiple according to that cash flow goes
up. I would be surprised frankly if
four years from now or five years from now Sprott didn't
manage $100 billion and I think they could manage $100 billion

(48:00):
in passive products with effectively the same AU, pardon
me overhead as they pay today. And that would be very
attractive for shareholders at that point in time.
I suspect 100 billion AUM, somebody like, you know, Credit
Suisse or Manulife or BlackRock,somebody who was trying to build

(48:27):
a natural resource expertise andfailing because they were 20
years late, which is say, you know what, I'll have that Sprott
thing. That's sort of the way I think
it ends. I think they get 200 billion
AUM. They become globally relevant.
And then I think we enjoy a bittersweet exit.

(48:51):
Fascinating sort of way that that could play out.
And we've sort of seen very sortof small steps to, to similar
type actions in the, in the local sort of brokerage market
down here. I want to change tech now, Rick
and and run through a bunch of commodities and the, the top of
that list is lithium and, and why that's top of the list, even
though we've spoken about it a fair bit lately.

(49:12):
Is that you, you said a year agothat perhaps it'll take two
years and lithium will be a fourletter word.
It'll be, you know, completely bombed out and hated and the
last year has been pretty rough.But it it seems we've seen a, a
kick up in, in prices recently. Do you think this is temporary
and and there's more hate to to sort of come or how do you?

(49:32):
Say this. Yeah, I do.
I, I do. I think there's more hate to
come. When we talked about it last
year, that was. I'm glad you brought that up.
That was unusually prescient. I thought you were going to
bring up something stupid that Isaid.
I'm delighted that you you managed to dredge out something
smart, I don't think. You sound stupid.
It was all clever. Wonders never cease.

(49:53):
You'll recall the lithium boom. There wasn't a shortage of
elemental lithium. There was a shortage of
processing capacity, and it was a critical component of these
lithium ion batteries. So the price spiked.
People started looking for lithium and we found a lot.
We hadn't found it before because we weren't looking for

(50:14):
it. You know, we had plenty.
So we found a lot and investor expectations were extremely
high. We probably found 150 deposits.
I don't know how many deposits, maybe six or seven of those go
to production. So the shake out where you take
the 150 aspirants down to, let'sbe generous, 10 that succeed,

(50:38):
it's going to piss a lot of people off.
They aren't going to like it. They don't like it so far, but
they ain't seen nothing yet. And I think on top of that, I'm
no technology guy, but I know Chevron, Occidental, Berkshire
Hathaway, all investing fairly heavily in direct lithium

(51:02):
extraction from Brine's. I'm not smart enough to know if
they make that work, but if theymake it work, then things get
truly ugly. I think I said a year ago, I was
brought up in both the oil and gas in the geothermal business,
and I always thought of lithium as a waste element or as

(51:22):
something that you could use in small doses to calm your nerves.
Because it was a waste element, you know, it fouled your
equipment. I when lithium is really, truly
hated, really truly hated, then I think there'll be good
opportunities there because I think you'll be able to pick up

(51:44):
companies that have a billion dollars into a deposit that have
100 million market caps, and that's always a pleasant
circumstance. There's there's 11 commodity
that I think is in the hated bucket.
I'm toying. I've never never had exposure to
it before, but I'm flirting withit.
Vanadium. I'm attracted to vanadium.

(52:08):
Thus far my attraction has been very painful.
I was a, you know, I got attracted to the vanadium market
5 or 6 years ago and most peoplecouldn't spell it.
And the consequence of that I concentrated my bet on something
called Largo originated a physical vanadium product, which
didn't work. And the consequence of my genius

(52:31):
is I'm down sort of 60%. I just did a $6 million money I.
Just did a $6 million secured loan on the physical product.
Yeah, it's, it's funky, but you kind of like you look at it and
you think the prices need to turn in the next 6 months
because that's that's when they got to repay it or.
No, I think I think vanadium's agood idea.
I think you need to be patient. I think it's going to be

(52:52):
extremely volatile and there's alot of applications for lithium,
the vanadium redox battery beinga new application, but the old
applications use a lot of value,use a lot of volume, pardon me,
and they have very, very, very high value.
Making steel stronger is a good thing.

(53:13):
So you're probably on to something.
It's a very small market and thepeople who participate in the
lithium market need to be as patient as me, which is rare,
and they need to be very tolerant of volatility.
The other thing I would caution is that many lithium mines that,
pardon me, vanadium mines that have grade, don't have size.

(53:35):
And you can be sort of right. If you get a small mine and
still not make any money, that'sreally hard on you.
You know you get everything right except for the mine, and
you still lose money. Yeah, you talk, you talk about
that phenomenon where like as a as a, as a taxpayer, you're
filthy, but as a speculator and you see opportunity and I, I, I

(53:57):
have a suspicion vanadium's going to fall into that category
and we'll see something stupid from government that.
I think you're right. Yep.
I mean, there's no doubt it's a critical metal.
I haven't seen very many fields of human endeavour where
government participation ever caused any net good.

(54:22):
I wonder why Mining would break that train.
Another commodity that has seen substantial government rulings
change it's sort of structure is, is nickel.
We've, we've touched on it a couple times.
Are you, are you thinking it's bombed out enough, Rick?

(54:42):
You know, I'm always early, so I've been buying some sulfide
nickel stocks. Guarantee they're going to fall
another 20% if I'm getting along.
I'm a sucker for sulfide nickels.
They've treated me extraordinarily well in my life.

(55:02):
They're rare beasts. I also, I think maybe you guys
talked to me last time after I flew back over the lateritic
nickel fields in southern Sulawesi.
You know, that's a disgusting sight.
It's a truly disgusting sight and I don't know how much longer
the Indonesian government of theIndonesian people will put up

(55:25):
with that. And to the extent that the
operators are forced to exercisenormal constraints with regards
to the environment, the cost advantage enjoyed by lateritic
nickels changes very, very, veryrapidly.
The same comment with regards torare earths, by the way.

(55:46):
You know, they're not rare. We haven't looked for rare
earths because the Chinese have produced them so cheaply.
What a lot of people don't note is that environmental standards
in western China are advancing very rapidly, and the
environmental destruction that the Chinese allowed and we're
willing to endure in Xinjiang are a thing of the past.

(56:07):
One of the things that they don't talk about so much is that
the cost of producing rare earths in China is going up very
quickly. And that would suggest that the
economic incentive price for therest of the world doesn't suffer
as much from the Chinese advantage that as the market
thinks it does. The same way in letter, in
nickels that I think the price in the price advantage enjoyed

(56:32):
by the Indonesian latter rights begins to dissipate as they're
forced to adapt Western world environmental standards or if
energy prices go up. It's that process is extremely
energy dependent. Another commodity just on on, on
the wrap up, Rick Silver. Silver's had a a great run and I

(56:56):
I suspect you might think the the early money's been made
there. Yeah, silver's an enigma to me.
It's treated me very well. You confuse yourself thinking
about it as an industrial metal,which of course it is.
But the price moves are all theyall coincide with precious
metals bull markets. I don't know why it is, but I
know that it is true that precious metals bull markets

(57:19):
begin with the fear buyer. They begin with gold, in effect,
gold bullion. And as the advance in the gold
bullion price goes faster than the cost of producing gold, the
gold company margins start to goand leadership in the precious
metals bull market goes from physical gold to the best of the

(57:39):
best gold producers, which is what we've seen this year.
Then it goes to the best of the rest.
You know, the money moves down the quality trail at some point
in time, increasing free cash flows.
And the momentum of the sector itself validates the precious
metals narrative to the generalist investor.
And when the generalist investorcomes into the resource space, I

(57:59):
don't know why, I suspect because of the lower unit value,
silver goes crazy. I mean, absolutely crazy.
I watched it happen three times in the past.
And by the way, when that happens, you won't need Rick
Rule to tell you it happened. People who haven't lived through
that bull market drives themselves just literally crazy
with a move from, I don't know, $31 to $33.75 or something like

(58:24):
that. We will see in this bull market
that kind of move on a daily basis happening several days in
a row. So it was such a fantastic one
because there's just not that many great ways to to play it
here on on the ASX and and in Australia more broadly.
So it's it's kind of forgotten about a little bit, but I get

(58:46):
from. No, no, no.
There's there's silver bugs out there, you just got to interact
with them. They're out there just the ways
of playing it in Australia are fine at whereas throughout the
Americas you have the the deposits and the the companies
in in much more abundance. You know, you all were, you all
were spoiled. You had Broken Hill, which was
one of the greatest silver minesin the world in drag, and then

(59:10):
you had Cannington. So although you haven't had a
lot of starts, you had a lot of finishes or at least a couple
spectacular finishes. It's very difficult to duplicate
those successes. I think that to the extent that
the punter community in Australia begins to reward the

(59:34):
silver narrative, the AustralianGeo probably will do pretty good
work in the American Cordillera.I'm not sure how many primary
silver deposits Australia itselfwill yield, but I know that the
Australian investor is becoming much less ethnocentric than he
or she used to be. It used to be one of the best

(59:56):
ways in the world for a foreign investor to get value was to buy
a non Australian asset in an Australian company during an
Australian bear market. Where are you guys?
I mean you guys even viewed the New Zealanders as logs, you
know. Yeah, that day is, from my point
of view, sadly over. One more commodity that I've got

(01:00:17):
to ask you about, Rick Tin. I'm attracted to the tin
business again. It's very difficult to play it.
You know, the easily the best tin name in the world is Alpha
Man. Unfortunately, it's located in
the worst part of one of the worst countries on the planet.

(01:00:39):
That's been a challenge, but I'mI'm quite attracted to tin.
Tin is one of those unheralded high tech minerals.
You don't have micro circuitry without tin, period, full stop.
And the whole world is micro circuitry.
You've you've explained a sort of similar narrative in the in

(01:01:00):
the PGM space and you've laid itthrough the physical.
Would you do the same here? The problem with tin in terms of
the physical, I looked at it a long time ago when I was with
Sprott because we looked at the success that we enjoyed with the
physical Uranium Trust and said where can we do this again?
What happens with materials liketin and nickel and copper is

(01:01:27):
that the price to move it and the price to store it relative
to the price of the commodity isa bit too low.
It's something that might work as an example for me personally
as a speculator, you know, buy abunch of tin in some warehouse
Kuala Lumpur or something like that and leave it there.
You know, do something smart. Nothing.

(01:01:47):
But in terms of making it a financial product, the
relationship between storage cost, shipping cost and the
price of the commodity itself means that the overhead around
running the physical trust makesit less attractive to the
investor base then say platinum and Palladium or gold or even

(01:02:08):
silver. I should tell you an anecdote.
You know, it's brought. We owned on behalf of investors,
a lot of gold, billions of dollars worth of gold.
And I was, as a consequence of that, allowed into the Royal
Canadian Mint to see this gold. And I have to tell you that the
pile of gold that constitutes a few billion dollars is

(01:02:32):
distressingly small. It's really unimpressive.
After my disappointment, I was ushered into the room where our
silver was. That was much better, much more
satisfying. It looked like billions of
dollars worth of stuff. I tell you that partially to
amuse you, but partially to say that I'm skeptical about the

(01:02:57):
efficacy of investment products,physical investment products
around commodities where you know the price relative to scale
isn't good. I've got last one for you.
You always get asked what your contrarian views are and and you
are a contrarian through and through.
That's your identity. So what's your most consensus

(01:03:18):
view in commodity markets and inthe mining sector right now?
I'm afraid I'm great. I'm, I've, I've grown to accept
the most crowded trade, which isthe anti U.S. dollar trade.
And I, I, I sort of believe the US dollar is probably overheated
in the near term as an investment theme for a decade.

(01:03:42):
I think it's still very much intact.
Our political class seems to do a wonderful job of promoting the
anti dollar. Every time I watch our political
leadership, I feel more comfortable with the anti dollar
trade. I remember, however, and my

(01:04:03):
friend Joel Lipman reminds me ofthis at our conference, the
famous quote that the US dollar is the worst currency in the
world, with the sole exception of all of the others.
While I feel bad about the US dollar in isolation, I feel less
bad about it relative to other currencies.

(01:04:25):
All of that by way of saying it wouldn't surprise me to see gold
take a breather if the US Federal Reserve doesn't whack US
interest rates. If they whack US interest rates,
that'll show the world savers that any concern for the
legitimacy of the US dollar is athing of the past in US society.

(01:04:48):
If they don't cut interest rates, I suspect that the dollar
price run in the very near term.I would define very near term is
less than a year is overdone. I I literally, I'm pained to say

(01:05:10):
that I believe that the political and social reality of
the United States is such that the US dollar in absolute terms,
not relative to the Australian dollar or other currencies, but
rather in absolute terms, will lose 75% of its purchasing power
in the next 10 years. I lived through that before.
In the decade of the 1970s. According to the Office of

(01:05:31):
Management Budget, the US dollarlost 75% of its purchasing power
in 10 years. That was a character builder,
and I'm already a character. It wouldn't surprise me.
The one must remember in the decade of the 70s when the US
dollar lost 75% of its purchasing power, but the gold
price increased 30 fold. I'm not suggesting that the gold

(01:05:55):
price is going to go up 30 fold.It's already up 12 fold since
2000, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the nominal
gold price in U.S. dollar terms mirror the decline in purchasing
power of the US dollar, which would suggest a three or four
fold expansion in 10 years. So overbought now a commodity of

(01:06:22):
necessity over a decade. Fantastic, Rick, the the the
parallels to the 70s, a super interesting one, which we've
sort of stood over a few times in the past, but I think they're
they're endlessly sort of fascinating and you can talk
about them at length that. Despite not living through the
70s like yourself, I. Have to have that experience for

(01:06:44):
ourselves. Thanks.
Thanks again for making the timeand coming on money of mine.
Rick, as always, it's great to chat.
Always a pleasure. I look forward to visiting with
the Australian audience. I look forward next year to
coming down, looking around, speaking at a couple of
conferences. I look forward to being down
there. I've been gone too long.
And there we go mate, plenty of contrarian wisdom sprinkled in
there throughout. A massive thank you to our

(01:07:05):
fantastic partners for making itall happen.
Sand Vick Round support, Focus the platform by market tech,
Axis Mineral Services and last but not least, get your tickets
to Africa Down Under next week. Go to Rick.
Now remember, I'm an idiot. JD is an idiot.
If you thought any of this was anything other than
entertainment, you're an idiot and you need to read out a

(01:07:27):
disclaimer.